Tag: Andrew Wakefield

  • Guest post: Lies wrapped in emotional appeal

    Guest post by Jen Phillips, originally on Facebook and posted here by permission.

    The movie ‘Vaxxed’ is showing at the David Minor Theater in Eugene this week. It’s billed as a documentary, but, like many other films claiming that genre, it’s chock full of inaccuracies and spin. For a ‘reality based’ gal like me, most of the time I just find that annoying, but in the case of ‘Vaxxed’, I find it dangerous and infuriating.

    Why dangerous? Because lying about vaccine safety scares a significant number of parents into opting out of vaccines for their children. That puts the children and their communities at risk for serious diseases. “Lying” isn’t a term I throw around lightly, but that’s exactly what this is: lies wrapped in emotional appeal. William Thompson, the so-called CDC Whistleblower, was taped without his knowledge, and the filmmakers spliced his words together to fabricate meaning that was not in his original statements. What does Dr. Thompson actually say about vaccines? Here is a direct quote:

    I want to be absolutely clear that I believe vaccines have saved and continue to save countless lives. I would never suggest that any parent avoid vaccinating children of any race. Vaccines prevent serious diseases, and the risks associated with their administration are vastly outweighed by their individual and societal benefits.

    Vaccines do not cause autism. The MMR vaccine (the focus of this movie) does not cause autism, or make children more susceptible to autism, or have any influence whatsoever on the manifestation of autistic characteristics. Andrew Wakefield is a disgraced and defrocked former physician who has gotten rich by fearmongering to vulnerable parents. He is not a reliable source of information on vaccine safety OR autism.

    Why infuriating? So many reasons. It’s infuriating that this misinformation puts the health of so many vulnerable people at risk. It makes me fidget with frustration that this is STILL being debated, when mountains of research and population level studies all over the world have shown that it is a non-issue. Mostly, though, it’s that the filmmakers and many of their associated anti-vaccination activists demonize autism as a fate worse than death. Presenting the possibility of death or serious disability from vaccine preventable disease as preferable to autism is as harmful as it is heartbreaking. Depicting people on the spectrum as ‘damaged’ or ‘ruined’ in some way is a standard tactic with which to scare parents into not vaccinating, and it’s disgusting.

    If you choose to see this movie, please, please, go in with your eyes open and be aware that it is so far from factual that Andrew Wakefield might as well be beaming in his commentary from a space station orbiting Sirius.

    If you have questions about vaccine safety or autism prevalence, I would be more than happy to provide evidence-based, accessible information if you reach out to me.

  • Anything to sell a few copies

    The Independent has aspirations to be a serious, responsible newspaper, so what’s it doing putting a story about Andrew Wakefield on its front page?

    Martin Robbins would like to know.

    Andrew Wakefield is about as discredited as it is possible for a doctor to get. He was found to have ordered invasive investigations on children without either the qualifications or authority to do so. He conducted research on nine children without Ethics Committee approval. He mismanaged funds, and accepted tens of thousands of pounds from lawyers attempting to discredit the MMR vaccine, being found by the GMC to have intentionally misled the Legal Aid Board in the process.  He was not just dishonest, unprofessional and dangerous; his contempt for the rules and regulations that safeguard children in research projects was vile.

    Wakefield’s research was unconvincing at the time and swiftly refuted, yet the ‘controversy’ over MMR has raged for years, fuelled almost entirely by credulous idiots in the media.

    And they’re still doing it, now, today.

    The villain, now firmly at the heart of America’s quack autism-cure industry, has come to gloat even as 60 measles-afflicted children are sent to hospital beds in Swansea.

    The Indy headline quotes Wakefield saying “Measles outbreak in Wales proves I was right.”

    That’s a sickeningly irresponsible headline.

    On Twitter, the Independent’s health writer Jeremy Laurance has spent the day demanding that critics read the whole piece. “Jeeezus!”, he responded to Ben Goldacre and others at one point, “U have NOT read the story.” What Laurance fails to understand is that few people ever do read the whole story. Any competent journalist understands that people tend to grab the information at the top, and don’t always stick around until the end of the piece.

    And besides, it’s not just the headline. Laurance’s article continues to put Wakefield’s point of view for a further 14 paragraphs, before giving over barely half that space to one contrary voice, addressing only a fraction of the points made. It would be a great example of the false balance inherent in ‘he-said, she-said’ reporting, except that it isn’t even balanced – Laurance provides a generous abundance of space for Wakefield to get his claims and conspiracy theories across, and appends a brief response from a real scientist at the end.

    And what for? There is no “controversy.” There’s no news (apart from the measles outbreak itself). What can possibly be the point of giving Wakefield lashings of new oxygen?

    Earlier, Ben Goldacre asked Laurance the following on Twitter: “How on earth can the Independent justify running 12 paragraphs today on MMR by Wakefield himself?” Laurance replied, “So what do u suggest? That we ignore him and let him go on spreading poison? Or answer him, point by point, as we have done?”

    There’s a difference though, isn’t there, between ‘not ignoring’ someone, and putting their opinions on the front page of a national newspaper; just as there is a difference between answering somebody’s claims, and republishing them verbatim on page 5 of the same national newspaper.

    Jeremy Laurance has a history of reacting badly to the idea that health and science journalists deserve scrutiny. What he doesn’t seem to grasp is that this is not an abstract public health debate between a few angry people on Twitter – he, and journalists like him, are putting the lives of real children at risk, their clumsy reporting stoking unwarranted fears about a safe vaccine.

    How a journalist can fail to grasp such an obvious and important point is beyond me.